Substituting just half a portion of beef with a handful of nuts, vegetables, fruits, and seafood could buy you 48 extra minutes of healthy life, and reduce your carbon footprint for that meal by 33%.
These findings come from a recent Nature Food study, where a team of researchers meticulously examined the health and environment-related impacts of almost 6,000 foods to provide guidance on the healthiest diets— or the planet, and for us.
Their findings reveal that instead of having to make ambitious large-scale dietary shifts from meat to plant-based foods, we can actually achieve large benefits by making much smaller exchanges—for instance, swapping one ingredient on our plates for another, and on a meal-by-meal basis.
The issue with most environmental dietary guides, the researchers say, is that they tend to position all fruits and vegetables against meat, leading to broad-brush recommendations.
Their more granular approach gives people more scope and power to align their diets with personal tastes, cost, and sustainability goals, the researchers believe: an individual can swap one food for another in lines with the guidelines and know they’re still making a difference.
